I don't normally travel to destinations very often where I have to find a hotel and book and many times when I do, I just use Hotwire to book a hotel. I took at least 12 trips last year and I think I booked only a few hotels on my own and therefore I don't have much hotel brand loyalty.

However, since I do tend to fly somewhat and have elite status, I am an American Airline point-whore and I always look for ways to get more airline points. And, I like to shop for a killer deal.

I'm heading to NYC this weekend and I originally booked a Hyatt hotel for NYC based on the MLife partnership. When I couldn't get the tier matching to work, I decided to go shopping to see what I could find.

I used Kayak as my main searching utility figuring it would find me the best reasonable prices. That way I could tell when searching other places how good or bad the prices actually are.

I used this with the Hyatt property first and noticed that booking directly through Hyatt with my Hyatt Gold Passport, I could book a better deal than listed on Kayak. I eventually canceled that reservation but sometimes there are discounts based on hotel rewards programs that aren't advertised on hotel search engines, so it pays to check the hotel directly.

Then I headed over to Jetsetter. They offer luxury brand hotels at deals. Usually only five star hotels. The daily sale prices at Jetsetter were pretty excellent, over and above what I could normally score through Kayak alone. Much better. The rest of the Jetsetter prices were exactly what Kayak was offering and since the daily deals weren't in the area of New York I was searching, I decided against booking one of them.

Then I got an Email from Rocketmiles through American Airlines. They've been bugging me to check out this site for a while, so I finally decided to click on the link to check out what they were offering. Rocketmiles is affiliated with Priceline or Hotwire (I believe). I did a search and to my surprise I found the same deal on Rocketmiles that Kayak was offering for the same five star hotel, PLUS an additional 6k American Airline miles just to book through them (4k bonus miles for a first time booking). The only catch: non-refundable. Since I get double miles on my American Airlines CC for hotel stays, that puts this deal at about 7k miles. Not too shabby for a hotel I was considering booking anyways due to a close friend's recommendation that I stay there.

I checked the hotel website directly and confirmed that it was indeed the same price I would have gotten booking direct (with a few dollars) and so I pulled the trigger.

So, it seems with a little research, I ended up with a great deal + 7k additional American Airline miles.

 

Sounds good. Just sometimes have to weigh all the time invested in the research if the price ends up being the same. In this case, it worked out great!

 

Exactly.

If I spent 5 hours research to save $200 I feel like a choad.

 

And you have a much higher chance getting a shitty room than if you book direct (esp if you have even low status level in that chain)

 

I've had one bad experience with a third party site several years ago so now I book directly with the hotel because if anything should go awry it's easier to have the issues fixed when booked directly with the hotel.

 

Exactly
I've only ever booked a hotel with a wholesaler once. There was a problem at the hotel. The hotel was going to comp me 2 nights, but couldn't since I booked through a wholesaler.

 

Although I didn't see it last trip usually standing in line at the checkin desk in Vegas will result in seeing someone arguing with an agent about their reservation booked through a third party. I feel bad for both the agent because the guests are usually fired up and the guests because they had no idea they'd be at a disadvantage.